Ideographic approach vs nomothetic approach

• What do we mean by the idiographic approach?


  • Attempts to explain the nature of individuals
  • Believes people have their own unique experiences and that individuals are subjective
  • No attempt to generalise findings
  • Qualitative data like case studies and questionnaires
• What is the nomothetic approach?

  • General laws on human behaviour
  • Provides a benchmark which individuals can compare against future behaviour can be predicted and controlled
  • Scientific experiments with large samples
• Where can we see the ideographic approach in psychology?

  • Humanistic approach is the most ideographic approach.
  • Rogers and Maslow took a phenomenological approach to studying humans were only interested in documenting conscious experiences of the self
  • anti-scientific
  • psychodynamic approach is often described as an idiographic approach because of little hands, but he was actually interested in universal laws
• What are examples of the nomothetic approach in psychology?

  • links approaches which are determinist reductionist and use scientific methods
  • Hypothesis are formed tested and then findings generalised to large groups of people
  • Behaviourism cognitive approach and biological approach are nomothetic
  • Skinner used 100 rats to create universal laws of learning.
  • Cognitive psychologists have inside processes of memory based on participants in lab experiments.
  • Brain scans of humans have been generalised to understanding localisation function
• Case for ideographic approach?

  • qualitative data which is rich in detail and provides full accounts
  • Some case studies have led to new hypothesis being generated like the case study of HM - this led to the understanding of all humans
• Case against the ideographic approach ?

  • restrictive - One case study cannot explain all behaviour
  • methodology is least scientific and relies on subjective interpretation
• Case for the nomothetic approach?

  • Scientific methodology without subjective judgements
  • Reliable with great scientific credibility
• Cases against the nomothetic approach?

  • Based on general laws, which lose individuality
  • Knowing there is a 1% chance of developing schizophrenia as little about schizophrenia itself
  • The richness of human experiences studies of memory are treated as a school not human experience
• (ideographic and nomothetic approaches ) Complementary rather than contradictory?

  • possible to study something using both approaches
  • In gender, there are general patterns established through Bems androgny scale and case studies like David Reimer
  • Complimentary understanding of both terms was introduced by Windelband - modern psychologists want rich detailed account of human experiences within a framework of general laws